


Stitch My Heart

by tinymacaroni



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Stitches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27573503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinymacaroni/pseuds/tinymacaroni
Summary: Some hurt/comfort for bounce-a-coin-off-your-witcher on tumblr! Honestly just some very standard fluff and angst, hope y'all enjoy!
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Kudos: 73





	Stitch My Heart

"Geralt? Geralt!" Jaskier shouted as he raced through the woods, tripping over a tree root that rose from the ground before him and crashing to the forest floor. "Geralt, help!"

The leshen that had been terrorizing the locals was elusive, and Geralt had been trying to track it down for two days. As luck would have it, Jaskier found it rather quickly, mere moments after disobeying Geralt's explicit instructions and wandering into the protected forest. No doubt the leshen could tell he was much easier prey than a witcher, and thought it could get an easy meal out of the bard.

A blur of black and silver raced past Jaskier, and a silver sword glinted in the midday sun as it arced through the air. The ancient creature screamed as it was slain, an eerie sound it should not have been able to make without any flesh to its disjointed body. Jaskier shivered, then winced as the movement aggravated an injury he didn't even recall getting. He was bleeding rather heavily from his side, just below his ribs, and he sucked in a breath through his teeth as he pressed down on the wound.

"Jaskier?" Geralt ran back to where the bard lay in the dirt, concern etched into every line of his face. "You're bleeding. What happened?"

"It must've hit me with that root." Jaskier nodded to indicate the root that had caused him to fall, and indeed, there was a bit of blood on the whip-like end of it. "Fuck, that hurts."

"We have to get you back to the village so I can take a better look. Can you stand?"

"Maybe? Probably. But I'll need your help." The hand not clutching at bloodied silk and torn flesh reached up and Geralt took it readily, hauling Jaskier to his feet and steadying him with a hand on the small of his back. 

"Can you  _ walk _ ?"

"Hopefully?" Jaskier took a haphazard step forward, then another, then lost his balance entirely. Geralt managed to catch him before he hit the ground, carefully avoiding the main wound as he helped Jaskier back up. "Apparently, that's a no. Not without help, anyway." 

Geralt grunted, wrapping an arm around Jaskier's back, hand resting well above the gash. "How's this?" They took an experimental few steps together and Jaskier nodded, still a little wobbly, but leaning against Geralt and using his companion as a crutch he managed well enough. "Alright. Let's go." Geralt steered then towards the village, as Jaskier could scarcely tell which way was west right now, and the silence that hovered over them disturbed him. Jaskier must be in more pain than he was letting on; normally it was impossible to get him to keep quiet, even when he was sick or injured.

They made it back to the alderman's home, where Jaskier had been supposed to stay put originally, and Geralt nodded to the man as he helped Jaskier into the only bed. He almost felt bad putting the man out of his home, but at least he was able to rent a room at the inn. Some of the locals still thought of the leshen as a guardian of sorts, the innkeeper among them, and Geralt was not terribly popular with that crowd right now no matter how many songs about him Jaskier sang.

"You still awake?"

"Hmm?" Jaskier seemed a bit out of it, but at least he was conscious.

"Good. Don't go to sleep, no matter how much you may want to - I need to be able to monitor how you're doing." Geralt spoke brusque as he felt Jaskier over for any other injuries. A mild sprain in one ankle and some scrapes and bruises, but nothing serious - which meant his inability to hold himself upright could be a sign he hit his head far too hard when he fell.

"But 'm tired," he mumbled, and Geralt clenched his jaw.

"Jaskier, listen to me. You  _ cannot _ fall asleep yet, okay? I will make sure you get plenty of rest later but I have to know you'll be alright first." He began working on getting to the gash in his side - luckily for him, the fabric was already torn, so Jaskier wouldn't be too upset later to find Geralt had ripped it off instead of fiddling with the delicate buttons.

"You sound serious. Am I… Am I gonna be okay?"

"I will do everything I can, Jaskier, to make sure you are. Just please,  _ please _ don't fall asleep yet." Jaskier squirmed as he cleaned the wound, too out of it to remember to keep still, and Geralt placed his hand on the bard's stomach, just under his ribcage, trying to hold him in place. He knew the sharp alcohol-based disinfectant burned, but he also knew it was necessary; he wasn't going to treat Jaskier's wounds just to watch him slowly burn up and die from an infection in his blood.

"G'ralt. Geralt, will you tell me a story?"

Geralt looked up from his work to glance over Jaskier's face - he was clearly fighting with everything he had to stay awake, and Geralt sighed.

"I'm not a storyteller, Jask, not like you."

"Please? Doesn't have to be good."

The witcher relented, chewing his lip as he smeared salve into the torn and bloodied flesh, trying to think of a good story.

"Alright, here's one - I've told you about my brothers, right? Eskel and Lambert?" He pulled a roll of linen bandages, a needle, and a spooled ball of catgut from his pack as he spoke, and Jaskier nodded, humming a quiet affirmative. "Well, Lambert's a bit younger than Eskel and I - he was one of the very last to be trained at Kaer Morhen. So when he first arrived, Eskel and I were already done with most of our basic training, and we were helping with new candidates who had made it through the Trial of Grasses." He shivered a little, remembering the awful bout of potions and mutagens that had ravaged his body and made him what he was now. He took a deep breath to steady himself, taking his threaded needle and carefully stitching the wound closed. "When Lambert first arrived, he was a handful and a half." He chuckled at the memory, but his hand stayed steady as he sewed the skin back together. "He  _ bit _ Vesemir, and I don't think I've ever seen the old man so mad." Jaskier huffed a soft laugh, and Geralt smiled a little as he got into the rhythm of telling the story. "Candidates were usually ten or younger when they first got to the keep, so here you had this tiny little runt of a boy, a whirlwind of flailing limbs and curses, and this old,  _ old _ man who could probably break him in two, and Lambert  _ bit _ him!"

Jaskier got quiet as he talked about Lambert's first days in the keep, and as he tied off the stitching and started wrapping bandages around Jaskier's torso, Geralt leaned over to look him in the eye.

"You still with me?"

"Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Just… listening." Even with his speech slightly slurred, Geralt could tell by his tone that there was something being left unsaid, but he didn't push.

"Well, the bandaging's done, so I think storytime is over anyway." Geralt put a hand to Jaskiet's forehead - no fever, that was good. "I need to stabilize your ankle, but that can wait. Go to sleep for now, I'll wake you up in a bit to make sure you're not getting any worse."

\---

Jaskier slept through the rest of the day and most of the night, with Geralt waking him every so often to check that his concussion wasn't worsening. He made sure Jaskier drank water when he woke him, and ran a hand gently through his hair as he slept. He still had no fever, which was good, and slowly but surely the tension that had built in Geralt's chest began to ease.

"G'ralt?"

"Hey. I'm here." Geralt had been sitting against the wall by the bed, and he rose as Jaskier spoke. "Careful, you'll tear your stitches." Jaskier was struggling to sit up, and Geralt hurried to help him so he wouldn't strain his injury. "How're you feeling?"

"Like shit." Jaskier was too tired to come up with a clever analogy, try as he might. "C'mere."

Geralt helped him scoot over on the bed, sitting beside him and settling an arm across his shoulders. Jaskier leaned into him, wincing slightly and shifting his weight as the angle aggravated his injury.

"Melitele's  _ tits _ my head hurts. Geralt, what happened?"

"The leshen went after you and you hit your head pretty hard when it knocked you over. You got a concussion, but it's not too bad. That thick skull of yours probably saved you."

"Oh har har, very funny. You're an ass, you know that?"

"So I've been told."

Jaskier chuckled, wincing again, then lay quietly for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was soft and hesitant.

"Geralt… were you really only ten years old when you were…" He struggled for the right word, sighing as he settled on changing his phrasing. "When you starter your witcher training?"

"No." Geralt's voice was quiet, somber. "I was an infant when my mother left me at Kaer Morhen. It's all I remember."

"What?" Jaskier looked up, aghast. "You were… you were a  _ baby _ ?"

"Hmm."

"Was that… was that a common practice? When the schools were still active?"

"Not particularly. Happened every so often, but usually boys were somewhere between six and eight when they came to the keep, and they'd start training proper when they turned ten."

"So young." Jaskier let his head fall back against Geralt's shoulder. "When I was ten, I was still trying to sneak out of my lessons to play down in the river."

"We played in a river too. It had bears in it though." Geralt smiled, trying to cheer Jaskier up, but he could tell it wasn't working. "Listen, Jaskier…" He sighed, kissing the top of Jaskier's head softly. "It was shitty, I'm not going to deny that. But there's nothing I can do now to change it, and if I hadn't become a witcher I never would have met you, or Yenn, or Eskel and Lambert. Maybe I'd have other people I'd care about, and maybe I'd be happier, but there's a lot of other things I would miss out on."

"I guess." Jaskier stretched up to kiss Geralt under his chin, nuzzling at the scratchy stubble. "I am glad I got to meet you, but if I could I'd give it all up to heal those hurts and make you happy."

"I am happy. Here, with you, I'm happy right now."

"You're such a sap." Jaskier grinned into Geralt's side, curling his legs up and snuggling closer to the witcher to settle in for another nap.


End file.
